Text Size

-

+

reset

This week in Congress

Vitter has accused Boxer of “bribery,” while Boxer has shot back that Vitter is demeaning the Senate, part of a complex beef over Obamacare that has revived ghosts of Vitter’s prostitution scandal. The ramifications aren’t just about the senators’ hard feelings: The spat could have profound consequences for public policy, particularly when it comes to trying to strengthen the meager national infrastructure spending program.

So how did what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called an “unusual marriage” between “Barbara” and “David” — as they call each other — head toward congressional divorce court?

As the respective chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Boxer and Vitter were friendly from the start given their vehement disagreement on, well, just about everything. The pair shepherded a huge water infrastructure bill through the Senate, were seen chatting amiably on the Senate subways and somehow connected in an otherwise bare policy Venn diagram.

“A good bipartisan news story,” they echoed each other in a March conference call introducing their water bill. When it glided through the Senate two months later, Boxer said that “when it comes to the infrastructure of our country, we come together.”

But since then, it’s been all downhill for Boxer and Vitter, known as a bit of a loner who may have his eyes on a gubernatorial run. Using his committee perch to separate himself from “official Washington,” Vitter helped organize a spring boycott on new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, irking Boxer, who argued he and other Republicans “take the side of the polluters.” And Vitter has used his slot principally to lob accusatory grenades at the EPA for a lack of transparency and an “assault on businesses,” among other alleged transgressions.

The newest cause du jour for Vitter is attaching an amendment to an energy bill that would end Obamacare subsidies for lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides — opposed by staffers in both parties because it will raise their health care costs. Between Vitter and Boxer, the move has sparked an ugly bout of name calling and finger-pointing that is likely to spill over into EPW Committee business. Amid the impasse, the entire Senate has ground to a halt, unable to act on a noncontroversial bipartisan energy efficiency bill.

Fighting back, Democratic lawmakers have drafted an amendment that would dig up Vitter’s past by denying senators Obamacare subsidies given “probable cause” they solicited prostitutes, an explicit reference to Vitter’s ties to the “D.C. Madam” that surfaced in 2007.

Vitter has asked for an ethics investigation into Reid and Boxer, who is the chairwoman of the Select Committee on Ethics. He wants a probe into another Democratic proposal to deny Obamacare subsidies to lawmakers that back Vitter’s Obamacare amendment, even if it fails.

“Senator Reid and Boxer have apparently led an effort to employ political scare tactics, personal attacks and threats that would affect each Senator’s personal finances (i.e. bribery),” Vitter wrote in his letter requesting an investigation.

“All he accomplished was another round of stories bringing up his own ethics issues. You have to wonder what he was thinking,” said a Senate Democratic aide.

Boxer’s ethics role has affected Vitter before, when he blocked a pay increase to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar over drilling policies, inciting an ethics complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Boxer and Ethics ranking member Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) dismissed that matter but said such future attempts “will be viewed by the committee as improper conduct reflecting discreditably on the Senate.”